How did she do it!

My bee pet!
I am having breakfast on my balcony, overlooking the Hudson and the GW Bridge, high up on the 21st floor, facing the  North/East, enjoying the morning, and there it is —  a bee nesting on this flower or that flower apparently in constant search for more, resting here, resting there.  Now I wonder how did this bee make it all the way up the windy 21 floors to my terrace? How I ask did this bee know that my place offered more than plenty of colorful flowers. Amazing. 

 The book I have just finished was a real page turner as all her books are, Isabel Allende "Island Beneath the Sea" refers to Saint Domingue when it was owned by France, the later name is Haiti, the time is 1770 - 1830 approximately. As always Isabel Allende breathes life into history: the topic is the incredible cruelty and viciousness of slavery, about the sugar plantation owners, the rebellion and emancipation. Narration is by one slave, the main character, and the wealthy and white plantation slave owners exercising  the cruelest treatment of slaves. Slave mothers would rather kill their children than allow them to suffer alive. There are free blacks, mulattoes, maroons, all fine differences in class. The white owners feel extremely superior and are overcome with lust for violence and rape, or maybe they just closed their eyes not to see how overseers handled the slaves to get the most out of them and to increase their harvest. It's a painful story to read and you assume that the white class (with exceptions) were made from a different material,  plastic for instance. The main character Zarité, the slave girl ends up as a young girl with the plantation owner. He rapes her and has two children with her whom he refuses to recognize. When the slave rebellion begins in Haiti it is up to her to save her white master/rapist, her children the white children of the master. There is a long and hard fought journey to freedom, she is unable to disconnect from her master, and surrounded by a series of resilient women. The story continues in New Orleans where they fled to, before New Orleans was part of the States. Voodo inspired folklore and Christianity mix easily. I always like historical novels. For me they work brilliantly in conveying in this case the collision of the forces of enlightenment against the forces of capitalism, greed and prejudice.

I am being sucked into a quagmire!

Ok, I had a mini stroke and I lost vision in one eye completely and certainly do not like it. It's not only that I cannot get used to it — face it: I see less! But what really annoys me (and should not) is how doctors tumble you around. Here a test, there a test, here another one and so on. First all the test in the hospital, ok. than daily checking of blood pressure, then a heart monitor wired to the body for fourteen days, then endless examinations of the eyes, new glasses, then and why not, a walk on the treadmill combined with esophageal echo. This means radio active fluid is injected into the body, you then dance on the treadmill, and as second act you are strapped onto a chair that lifts up and turns an inch sideways every minute. This is for the doctor to assess whether the blood stream into your heart is ok. Everything is fine, I am told when I leave. But why I ask, did this three hour test need to be repeated a few hours later. I asked of course,  and the reply was "One wants to make sure."  Then various ultrasound of the eye before and after, quite interesting;  and loads, I mean loads of colorful pills, the dosage increases steadily, the blood pressure however is not impressed at all and does not go down. The pharmaceutical companies have a good laugh on my account and I decide to order my medicines now from Canada, who again orders from England, who again orders from India and it all arrives here in neat little packages and is much less expensive! 

Well, how timely it  was when a promotional postcard arrived announcing a new play: Dr. Knock, Or the Triumph of Medicine performed at the Mint Theater, 43rd Street between 8+9th Avenue, 4th floor. The play was written by Jules Romains in 1923 — and that was before the discovery of antibiotics and most of our modern-day medicines. Incredibly though, the play still represents modern-day America at the eve of our new healthcare bill.  We meet Dr. Knock who is taking over the office of a country doctor who confides that the population is quite healthy and does not require the services of a doctor a lot. But Dr. Knock turns this around quite quickly and invites people for free to see him. As soon as he meets a new patient he manages to diagnosis one or the other exotic and frightening maladies, and in his matter-of-fact chilling manner tells them that they are very sick. He prescribes plenty of medicines which is also to the benefit of the pharmacist! Familiar? Although he is a self-taught healer without a medical license his business thrives, people stream to him, and he is able to make the extreme perfectly reasonable. And he watches his financial success quite carefully on clip charts. We chuckled, we laughed; it was all too painfully familiar.

Since it was a 2:00 PM performance we decided to walk toward the River and look at the INTREPID, the huge air plane carrier, anchored at the Hudson with all its sea, air, and space structures, a huge hands-on museum and plenty of information about these incredible flight machines. We only had one hour before shut-down and had to rush through, up and down the ladders, onto the bridges (one for the Admiral and one for the Captain), quite amazing. The whole area around there has changed since my last visit to the INTREPID, no more dilapidated piers — the piers are renovated now and reach out far into the Hudson, sprinkled with restaurants, food vendors and since it was evening,  relatively few people. I keep exclaiming how beautiful the West Side is now!

A Saturday in May 2010

I had read and heard a lot how nudity had invaded the arts more openly recently: in one or two operas, in  musicals, and now in a performance installation at the MOMA. Cynical as I am I argued that this of course was only done to attract more visitors to the MOMA and these were pure business tactics to gain notoriety. Well, I had decided I would not contribute to this and simply would not see it (although we have a membership). But one afternoon, we went to see the very interesting German documentary

"The wondrous world of laundry" at the MOMA. Hans Christian Schmid's movie is an  excellent movie depicting bleak present day realities  of a small group of women and their families who live in a small border town in Poland and who wash the laundry for all the five star hotels in Berlin. The laundry is sent early in the morning and returned the next morning, washed, spic and span, folded neatly. The owner of this successful business in Berlin is a middle aged executive. He comments on his business practices, how to improve productivity of the women even further and how far he could possibly go. He is of the opinion that if you believe in something you definitely will be successful (he meant financially). Maybe he was never defeated, but he certainly was arrogant. On the other hand here were the simple Polish families and the stories mainly of the women who were virtually slaving away day for day, shift for shift, without making any financial headway. They are resigned to the fact that this is their life and they try to make the best out of it, which is not very much in our eyes. Everything looks shabby, gray and sad. They are incessantly smoking their home made cigarettes and have extremely little time for their children or any leisurely activity. School is not much to talk about and expectations are low. The only way out seems to move away to another country than Poland. Showing dignity, everything in their life evolves around their shifts, their routines to survive  the shift, every day of the week, and the complete lack of time. They are aware of their status and their lower life style compared to the rest of the European world and particularly the German (women's) way of life. But all of this is accepted by them without any complaints.

Afterwards I decided that I might as well  take a look at the performance installation that everybody talked about:

Marina Abramovic. And to just say it right away, I was very impressed and I like it! A lot! There she was, sitting in the middle of a room, on a chair (for seven hours a day) meditating, looking straight ahead, the longest time she has ever performed in a museum setting. It involves viewers' participation, and if you wanted to do so, you could sit across from her, motionless, for hours, minutes or seconds. Video screens and sound pieces document  her four decades performances accompanied by the artist's voice. The variety is far ranging, thought evolving,  referring to the cruelties of our world. It is all  awakening and very permanent. And there are the much talked about  life performances by other artists (who perform in the nude). So there is a beautiful couple,  stalk naked and standing opposite  and facing each other, blocking the entrance to another room, so close together that you virtually would have to push yourself between the two of them to pass through into the next room, if you so desire. Or there was a pinkish looking older man underneath a skeleton, motionless, for hours on time. Not far from there was a huge mountain of white washed (cow) bones, just the look of it made you shutter. Well, as I said, I was taken, I was entranced, and must say it falls into the category art —  a fact that I had disputed endlessly before I saw Marina's show. She uses her body as a medium and believes her art is not as dead as a photography; theater is just a repeat day for day — her life performances are the art, real but temporary.

Hans Fallada: Every Man Dies Alone

The other day we strolled on Columbus Avenue, rummaging through all the books at one of the street book dealers and my heart stopped when I saw the name of the author, Hans Fallada. Now this is a long time when I saw that name last, maybe I was 8 or 10 years old, when I read the book, "Kleiner Mann Was Nun?" (Little Man What Now?). I remember this book as one that I could not stop reading, but I don't remember where it came from, or who gave it to me (there were not many books around then!). I probably swapped it with somebody in school. Now here it was in English, I had no idea that his books were translated, no idea that he was a very reputed writer and all his book dealt with common people and Nazism. I also was not aware about his life. In a duel he had killed somebody very early in his life and went to prison for this, he became addicted to alcoholism and drugs. His father was a judge and his mother from a middle class background and they lived in Berlin. To get away from his addiction, Fallada worked as a farm hand in the country. Later married, he maintained a string of respectable jobs in journalism, working for newspapers and eventually for his publisher, Rowohlt. "Kleiner Mann..." was a huge success, a movie was made from it (1932) by Jewish producers,  it was translated into English and apparently became also a bestseller in the US.  Other famous books of his: Wolf Among Wolfes in 1937. But all was overshadowed by the rising of the Nazi Party. He was declared an "undesirable author", and wrote children stories and non-political stories to make money. Because of his love of  Germany he resisted from immigration. In 1943 his publisher Rowohlt fled the country and he again turned to alcohol and drugs among other things. Finding himself incarcerated in a Nazi insane asylum it was suggested that he writes an anti-Jewish novel. But he wrote The Drinker, a deeply critical autobiographical account of life under the Nazis, but he was not caught. He was released in December when the Nazi government began to crumble. He remarried again and shortly after the Soviets invaded he once again turned to drugs with his new wife  and when he died in 1947 the book Every Man Dies Alone had recently been completed, a true, anti-fascist novel of a German couple, Otto and Elise Hampel, who distributed anti-fascist  materials in Berlin and were executed.  Fallada died weeks before publication of this book. Altogether 10 Fallada noels have been translated into English. His pen name Fallada was taken from a Grimm's Fairy Tale Story. At the end there are several copies of the Gestapo files on which Fallada based his story in 1945. The book was completed in 24 days!


The story is of an ordinary German couple, quiet, cautious and middle-aged. Their small act of resistance begins after they learned of their son's death in the war. They decide to leave postcards in various locations around Berlin encouraging the German citizens to resist the German regime. Main characters are  Otto and Anna Quangel and the desperate Gestapo inspector charged with stopping them. It also shows how other ordinary citizens are dealing with the ethical issues of living in Nazi Germany during the war, and how some are taking advantage of the reign of fear and making a living as informants and blackmailers. It is the memory not only of the Quangel's protest, but also of many other protests which are perhaps not entirely in vain?

It is a horrifying immense story, impossible to put  down. The chapters are short, there are many different well defined and varied characters who all live in a building that also houses a timid Jewish grandmother, a bookish judge, a mail carrier, housekeepers, and a bestial Nazi family. The head line of each chapter is always short and descriptive, almost childish, a short line explaining the next chapter, for instance: Fear and Terror, or The First Card is Written, or Six Months Later: The Quangels. 


Part of what's so fascinating about Every Man Dies Alone is that this is not a story of Jews and Nazis, but of normal German citizens.  Of the writing and distribution of the 285 postcards and 8 letters dropped by Otto and Anna Quangel around Berlin, 267 of them found their way into the hands of the Gestapo quite quickly. They were almost all immediately turned over to the authorities by people too terrified by the Nazi regime to risk doing otherwise.

Being under the weather

Somehow with the loss of my eye I seem to have zoomed into non-stop doctor visits, pharmacy visits, talks about the pros and cons of this or that medicine, what to do, how to prevent more harm, and why, yes why did it happen at all? There is not eloping at all, one follows along and hopes for the best. Claudia told me about the Eye Institute at Columbia; she works with a very gifted therapist and recommended that I go there and immerse myself into a few sessions. My insurance allow me to do so. Although inside I think I will not be able to get my sight back, and every doctor whom I asked has confirmed this, but I just cannot give up. And if I only improve the vision in my good eye. Everything involves a huge "paper trail", such as references, reports, which I all initiated today. Why not! What a miracle it would be if it really works!

One thing is to listen to the stories about healthcare and the high medical cost, and the other is to be exposed to it. Incredible, what I have learned. There is for instance the blood thinner PLAVIX, it costs $187 per month. The pharmaceutical industry in the United States stopped selling the generic of PLAVIX, you can only buy the brand name although the generic was available once. They also decided that one month has 28 days only. Another medication that I am now taking to lower my blood pressure costs per month $89, and this number is just for the generic drug. Altogether I take I think six different medications and it all adds up, plus of course I pay for my medical insurance $300/month. It is frightening! I looked into the possibility of ordering from Canada ; the generic of PLAVIX is available there (surprise)  at a much lower price.  I will probably pursue this option although Dr. Davis warned me that "there are rumors that the medications in Canada come from India and they are not pure". What to do, I think I will take a risk.  It feels like being in a windstorm that takes you high up into the air and twirls around without stopping. What a crazy world. Where will it end?

Welcome Spring!

Every Spring the first color spring flowers
on my terrace

Winter did not seem to end this year,  the cold continued endlessly, and one hungered all the time for the summer and warmth. And suddenly it's here. How can the trees so suddenly show their wonderful light green dress, the magnolias burst into fat blooms,  the cherry trees display their wild force of blossoms, and the wonderful exquisite dogwood shines through the woods.  It has happened again! I bought my first batch of flowers today for the terrace, bright beautiful dots for my red clay pots. I visited Louise and we went to took Cosco, this huge ugly mega store where everything is only available in triple quantities or larger at a discount price. I ended up buying more than I could afford, but do you believe it, they did not have flowers! Next to it was Loew's and finally I got to pick the first beauties, impatiens, petunias, some basil, a weeping heart, all in yellow, pink, blue, read, magenta! I planted it today and realized that I needed more! It looks sort of sparse, but vow I know what it will look like in a month or two. What fun.

Chaim Potok: My Name Is Asher Lev

This is a book that I got for Jay from the library and I quickly started reading it before handing it over to him. It was just curiosity and I did not expect liking it at all. To my surprise, I learned a lot and turned the story around in my mind quite a bit. Well, I also discovered that  reading is a bit slower now with only one eye.

The main character is Asher Lev, a hasid, growing up in the 50's in  Crown Heights, Brooklyn, An observant Jew he lives with his very religious parents in a small apartment observing the Holidays, going to a yeshiva  and eating (of course) only Kosher food; he is part of his devoutly observant sect. His father is highly respected by the community and is important to the Rebbe and he  helps him to get Jews out of Russia into the US.  What makes Asher Lev so different is that he has a "gift" as they call it, he cannot stop painting, drawing, a non-acceptable hobby among the very religious hasidic Jews. His father cannot accept this at all while his mother from the very beginning urges him to continue his "pretty paintings." Asher Lev is driven, he cannot stop thinking about painting and it is the Rebbe (who I learned later is based on the real Rabbi Schneerson in Brooklyn) who accepts his "gift" and allows him to get acquainted with another successful artist, Jacob Kahn, a non-observant Jew, where he takes lessons and learns to paint nudes and gets exposed to a freer life style.  All the while Asher Lev tries to adhere to his religion, his studies. His father goes to Vienna and his mother stays behind, a great sacrifice for her, to allow Asher Lev to continue his paintings. He grows up to be a formidable artist. He travels in Europe and at a certain point is driven to paint his "master piece", a crucification scene that includes his mother on the cross (for all her sacrifices) and Asher Lev and the father as side characters. It turns out an extremely successful and widely acclaimed painting causing great turmoil to his parents and offending his community. It seems that it is impossible for Asher Lev to continue living among the hasidic people. He has grown too far apart. Judaism and art just do not mingle and the conflicting traditions cause extreme pain and suffering  to everybody around. I was fascinated by the strong urge of Asher Lev to follow his art against all odds and to find his own definition of beauty. He is non-stoppable and completely true to himself all the way adhering to his upbringing and his traditions. He tries to conform to the Goyim artistic world where he does not belong and at times he almost seems to lose his sense of self identity. At the end he has no other choice than going back to Europe to continue his life as a loner.